Goodnight, Nico
by Irato
Summary: Tell them how you died, Bianca. Tell them about how you died to save your friends, and how your last thoughts were about the little brother you loved more than anything. Tell them all of it, child. Don't be afraid.
1. Goodnight, Nico

**Well, look at that. I finally got off my big, lazy butt and submitted a story to FF. Amazing. I should get some sort of award for this.**

**This is a one-shot dedicated to Bianca di Angelo, the poor girl who died in the third book of the PJO series. Why did Rick Riordan have to kill off so many people? It was like Harry Potter all over again...**

***EDIT* Well, I've edited the story a little and added a small bonus chapter. Re-read it if you want, read the bonus if you want. There's a question I've written at the end of the bonus chapter, so make sure to go see that after reading, please.**

* * *

"_Distract it. I'll just have to time it right."_

"_No, I'll go."_

"_You can't. You're new at this! You'll die."_

"_It's my fault the monster the monster came after us. It's my responsibility. Here. If anything happens, give that to Nico. Tell him… Tell him I'm sorry._

"_Bianca, no!"_

But I wasn't waiting for Percy. I charged the monster's left foot, towards the hatch that lead to my friends' survival.

How could this have happened? It was just a tiny figurine. Hades. The only reason I recognized it was because Nico was always raving about how it was the only god statue he didn't have in his little Mythomagic collection.

It was lying on the ground, facing up as if it was calling out to me. I picked it up and turned it over my hands a couple of times, imagining my brother's reaction if he found out I brought a present for him. "Wow, Bianca, thankyouthankyouthankyou!" he'd say. I smiled. As annoying as he could be, I really did love my brother. Without another thought, I slipped it in my pocket.

It was the worst mistake I had ever made.

Now my friends were fighting for their lives against a defective automaton the size of a skyscraper, and I had just embarked on what was most likely a suicide mission. Inside the robot. Which was the grossest place I'd ever seen.

Really. If you had thought that the outside of the defective Talos was dirty, it was as shiny as a brand-new penny compared to the inside. By the time I reached what I thought was the left knee, I was covered in grime, spider webs, and what I can only hope was rust. Eww.

I was about halfway up when I realized that I had no idea what to do. Up until now, I had just been climbing to the top, avoiding getting my clothes caught in gears and the occasional confused rat. My brain whirred as I tried to think. This is what I came up with:

1) The ladder I was climbing most likely led to whatever was controlling the robot.

2) If I seized control, I could stop the robot.

3) If I could stop the robot, my friends would be safe.

4) But what would happen to me?

I shuddered when I thought of the possibilities. _Whoa there_, my brain said. _Don't think about that. Think about, um, Nico! Yeah, Nico! He's waiting for you to come back alive, so hurry up and shut this overgrown chunk of metal down already!_

For some reason, the last thought gave me strength. Rung after rung I pulled myself up, barely able to hold on as the robot shook and trembled. Before I knew it, I reached the head, which I recognized as the control room the second I laid my eyes on it.

The monster must have had security cameras installed in its eyes or something, because two massive screens showed flickering images of what was going on outside in front of the room. The room itself was pretty small. Its walls were curved and looked like they had wrinkles embossed into them, reminding me of a brain. Despite my current situation, the last thought made me grin. For all its size, the robot had a very tiny brain.

Right in front of the screens sat a long table with a complicated-looking array of button and wires, complete with a chair that looked like it had come straight out of a scene in Star Trek. I sat down on the chair and looked at the controls. Only then did I realize that I had no idea how to command the robot to stop moving.

I buried my face in my hands and rested my elbows on my knees. After we had come so far, was this the way it was all going to end?

The sound of explosions made me lift my head, and I looked at the TV monitors that connected me to the chaos of the outside world. Things were looking bad for my friends. Unless I figured out the controls and fast, Talos was going to stomp my friends into bloody smears on the desert floor.

I scanned the buttons with new determination. I was not going to give up, and my friends would survive.

So I did the natural thing.

I slammed my hands down on as many of the buttons as I could reach and prayed that I wouldn't end up squishing my friends on accident.

A sudden SLAM that knocked me from my chair told me I had succeeded. I looked up at the screen and saw somebody cheering for me. Percy. I smiled in gratitude.

My happiness was short lived, however. The floor began tilting dangerously. A split second after I realized I was falling, I was thrown from the floor and hit my head against the wall with a painful crack. I tried to stand up, but I was too dizzy and the robot was unstable.

The screens flickered out completely. Sirens wailed from somewhere in the ceiling, and a prerecorded voice of a woman said, _"Warning. Robot malfunctioning. Destruction is imminent. Warning. Warning. Warning. Warn-"_

The woman's voice and the sirens cut off suddenly. The room grew uncomfortably hot, as if somebody had tossed it into an electric oven.  
My stomach twisted in fear. I felt sick. I didn't want to die. _Oh please don't let me die, oh please-_

There was a painful, ear-splitting shriek of metal on metal, and the robot lurched sideways. I slammed into the table this time, and cut myself on the wires. Talos gave me no time to recover. He started running, bouncing up and down with every stride and tangling me deeper into the cords. I couldn't get out, no matter how hard I struggled. I think I screamed, but I couldn't tell. More metallic shrieks covered up all the noise I made, one after another, each one followed by a horrible CLANG. I had no idea what was going on. It was pitch black, I had no way of getting out, and I was terrified.

So very terrified.

Every swear word I ever learned during my short, miserable life tore itself out of my throat. Images of the people I loved flashed through my head. Zoë. Percy. Thalia. Grover. The hunters.

Nico.

_Nico_.

Oh gods, how would I ever be able to apologize to him? I was such a horrible, selfish sister. How could I have left him like that?

Before my mind could form another thought, a deafening screech louder than all the rest echoed in the room, and the world plummeted.

As the head whistled down to the ground, I realized the horrible truth. The screeches I had heard earlier were the sounds of the robot's body parts sliding off as it broke apart. The joints of the neck must have had come loose when the automaton hit itself on the head. And now I was plummeting to the ground at a hundred miles per hour, with no way out of my prison.

_One shall be lost in the land without rain._

There would be no homecoming for Bianca di Angelo. I was going to die.

I hit the ground with a sickening CRUNCH. Two sides of the room crumpled like a tin can, crushing the lower half of my body. Debris and wires cut into my face and my arms. I could feel blood pooling around my body. I was dying, losing too much blood. I couldn't even feel the pain anymore.

A large rip was torn into the wall above me. My vision was getting fuzzier and fuzzier, but somehow I managed to turn my ruined body so I was staring into the night sky.

The moon was so beautiful. The stars burned my eyes. I tried to lift my arm, but it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I was so tired. So very, very tired.

My mind wandered, and I found myself thinking about my brother. Oh, Nico, I'm so sorry. I'm so selfish. I'm so sorry for leaving you. I love you. Can you ever forgive me?

As my life drained away, I clung onto one last image of my brother. _Please,_ I begged silently, though I didn't know who I was begging to. _Please, let me see my brother one last time._

"Goodnight, sis!"

It was my brother. Wearing those ridiculous blue pajamas that were too big for him. He beamed at me and waved, the same way he did at our first night in Westover Hall. I hung on the image until it faded away along with my heartbeat. Before peace washed over me, I smiled one last sad smile and whispered my final words.

Just two.

* * *

**Want to take a stab at what those two last words were? If you can't figure it out, I marvel at the size of your brain. Or rather, the lack of it.**

**Raise your hand if you loved Bianca! Now, put your hand down. You look silly, waving your arm around like that in front of the computer.**

**Review, please! Tell me what you think. I don't care if you believe it's really good or if you think it sucks so bad you'd like to hunt me down and kill me. (Just tell me _why _you think it's bad.) Constructive critisim is equally appreciated. This is the first time I've ever written a story for FF, and if I get no reviews I will go emo and start cutting myself. **

**That was a joke.**

**Is there anybody who would like to volunteer to be my Beta reader? (Or at least teach me how to use the Beta thingamajigee.) I write a wide range of stories in my spare time, and once in a while I might upload a story onto FF. If that happens, it would be nice to have a skilled editor who is willing to be _very _patient with me. **


	2. Bonus Chapter

**Well, here's the bonus chapter I promised! This is purely crack, so if you don't want to ruin the mood of the previous chapter, skip over to the bottom and read this later.**

* * *

Bianca di Angelo walked aimlessly around the underworld, bumping into invisible trees and wondering where the heck she was. Why was she in the underworld? Because she was dead, which kinda sucks. Why wasn't she in Elysium, having fun and celebrating and cooking barbeque with Abraham Lincoln and all that other crap? 'Cause I'm the author, that's why, and I don't think you want to mess with me.

Okay?

Good.

So as I was saying, Bianco di Angelo was walking aimlessly and bumping into invisible trees. However, this time, she bumped into a tree that was not quite invisible and not quite a tree. In fact, it was a signpost, and very much visible. On the sign, printed in big, obnoxious red capital letters, were the words, "HADES'S PALACE." Bianca read the words and thought to herself, "I'll go there, because I want to take a look, regardless of the guards that will probably use pointy objects to stab me if I try to go in!"

So Bianca marched to the palace (because marching is a cooler verb than walking) and arrived at Hades's not so humble abode. It was made of black, shiny obsidian and radiated evil and malignance and all those other words that are synonyms of "bad". Stiff, white skeletons of dead soldiers and pirates and ninjas and penguins stood erect in front of the gate, carrying guns and other explosive items.

Bianca walked past them and entered the palace, because skeletons are inanimate objects and therefore cannot protect anything, regardless of whatever weapon they hold. Silly.

The massive doors creaked shut behind her and she ooh-ed and aah-ed in awe. Sparkly gems adorned the ceiling. Sparkly gems adorned the walls. Sparkly gems adorned the toilet. There were so many sparklies that Bianca should have been blinded and probably incinerated, but I'm the author here, so shut the hell up.

During the annoying space of time that the author was talking to the audience while they were trying to read the story, Bianca walked into the throne room where she saw Hades, sitting on a fancy chair that was just as sparkly as the rest of the palace. (Hades has an extreme sparkle fetish, apparently.) Hades was angsting about his status and how he didn't get enough respect and about his crapload of work, etc and all that, too loudly to hear Bianca's footsteps echo rather loudly through his throne room. Even though his eyes were open and he was facing the doorway when she entered.

He's is a jerk like that. How did a nice lady like Maria di Anglo ever fall in love with that greasy idiot? She must have been, like, drugged or something.

Yeah, probably.

Bianca cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "HELLO THERE!" very loudly in an irritating way, because all the irritating angst that Hades was leaking was irritating her. Hades still didn't notice her, which irritated her further, so she reached for an irritating tennis ball that had magically appeared in her pocket due to the author's irritating plothole powers and threw it at him. Irritably.

She missed, but it bounced off the wall behind him and smacked against the back of his head, so everything's cool.

Hades snapped out of his angst and stared at Bianca. Bianca stared back. The staring went on and on so long that most of the readers got bored and went away to read a PJO fanfic with a real plot. (I heard that they actually exist.) After about an hour of pointless staring, Hades leapt out of his sparkly throne and said in his most OOC voice, "BIANCA, MY DAUGHTER!" with tears flowing down his oh-so manly face in happiness.

Bianca had tears flowing down her not-at-all manly face as well, but that was because of the pointless staring. She had forgotten to blink.

Bianca is so smart.

"Oh father," she cried, because at that moment the author used her plothole powers again to make her spontaneously realize that Hades was her father, "I've always wondered who you were! I don't resent you at all, even though you never bothered to visit while my little brother and I were trapped in a magical hotel practically frozen in time for seventy years!"

"Oh my darling Bianca," Hades wept, "I love you so much, even though I originally planned to use you for my own selfish needs and am planning to use your brother instead, now that you're dead! I've dreamt about embracing you whenever I wasn't too busy fantasizing about rising in power and proving to my annoying relatives that I am important, even though I am irritating and greasy!"

They hugged, radiating love and happiness and all those other squishy emotions in a very OOC way. Ew. The author is disgusted.

At that very moment, Persephone stomped in, attracted by all the squishy, pointless emotions that had disturbed her little nap. Needless to say, she was as angry as a polar bear when its dinner is stolen. That is to say, very, very angry.

So she pulled out her evil spoon of doom and ate cereal, because Demeter told her to, and she didn't dare to disobey her father. Oops, I mean mother. Laugh at the author's mistake. Haha, so funny. Now stop laughing. It's annoying.

Now, at this point, all the readers grew tired of the author's pointless butting-in-impromptu-moments habit. They killed her with sporks and other dangerous kitchen utensils (including Persephone's spoon of doom) and dragged her bloody, broken body off to the Place Where Stupid Fanfiction Authors Rest after Being Mauled by Unhappy Readers. So, R.I.P., and all that crap. The author died, and we'll never find out what happens to Bianca and her father, because dead authors cannot write. Therefore, the fic was declared as discontinued, and all the penguins remembered to look both ways before crossing the street. Happily ever after. The End.

Fin.

Now leave me alone.

* * *

**Are you laughing? Yes? No?**

**...**

**I'm thinking of posting a new story soon, so come vote at my poll to choose which story you want to read first. There's more information on my profile.**

**So, what are you waiting for? VOTEVOTEVOTE!**


End file.
